Making “Gritty” Kids

As someone who interacts with learners on a regular basis, “grit” is brought up as a way of children trying to persist and learn. Grit is a funny way of looking at things. It is the idea that by persisting students can achieve any difficult task. I believe this is true, but not in the way it is presented. With proper scaffolding and multiple points of entry, students can come to understand just about anything, but this is often left out of the ‘gritty-equation.’ This way of making gritty kids seems like we just leave them to figure it out and persist, but we should be helping them along… which is not reward or punishment. 

In simple, we can make “gritty kids” by helping them learn the way they learn because later in life, they may not have someone showing them how to achieve a goal in a way that suits them. The learner must figure out the way they learn and how to translate the messages from others into something that works for them.